Goal Zero Nomad 100 Solar Panel - Portable - 100 Watt

Video Transcript for Checking Out the Goal Zero Nomad 100 Solar Panel

Hi there, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Today we're gonna take a quick look at this Goal Zero Nomad 100 portable solar panel. Now this is a portable, rugged and powerful panel that's going to allow you to charge your Yeti solar generators with the built in eight millimeter cable here. So the Yeti solar generators are sold separately, but this will allow you to charge that up while you're off grid. You also have the ability to charge up your cell phone, tablet, or other battery powered gear with the 2.4 amp USB-A port here. This does have four monocrystalline panels, so altogether you're going to have a max rating of 100 watts.

Now of course, that depends on the environment you're in, how much direct sunlight you're getting, time of year, elevation, those sort of things. So that is going to be the best that you're gonna be able to get with this. Keep in mind this is going to have a nice, rugged construction so it can be left out in the rain if you're away from camp, but obviously you're not gonna be getting much sunlight if there's a thunderstorm rolling in. So probably a good idea to store it away anyway. it is very portable.

It only weighs about 10 pounds, just a little over 10 pounds. You can see we do have attachment loops all over so you can very easily get this connected to your vehicle, your tent, wherever it is that you're wanting to hook it up. You'll be able to connect it where you want to. As far as our overall dimensions go, we are sitting at about 20 1/2" tall when we have it unfolded. Our length is about 60" or about 5' wide.

That's not including this flap here, just our panels themselves. And then we're sitting about 1" deep. That includes our connector here. So it is very thin, but that sticks out just a little bit. So about 1".

And when we fold it up, again, our height's gonna stay the same, 20 1/2", but our width is obviously going to dramatically decrease. It's gonna be about 15 1/2" wide. And then our depth is about 2". You can see on the backside here, we do have a lot of different pockets that we can help store connectors and different things in, and those are zippered closures and a mesh construction. So that will allow us to very easily keep things organized. A couple different things that I've seen people weren't so happy with this about is there's no real good carrying handle for this. It is pretty convenient so you can just kind of tuck it under your arm. But some people mentioned wishing that there was some sort of handle here that you could easily carry this around with. Another complaint I've seen is that this eight millimeter cable is pretty short. It's only about 6", or sorry, 6' long. Obviously if you're putting this out in the sun, you wanna stay in the shade. That's not gonna give you a whole lot of length to connect your solar panels to your Yeti generator. So there is an extension cord available, and you can see it there on the screen. So about 15 extra feet there to give you a room to move around, make sure that your panels are gonna be in the sun. That is sold separately. You can find it here at etrailer.com using that part number you see on the screen there. And like I said, this is rated for 100 watts, but several of the comments I've seen have said that even in ideal conditions, it doesn't quite get up to that 100 watt capacity. So if that is really important to you, would recommend maybe using multiple solar panels. You can chain up to four solar panels together to collect more power from the sun while it's out. That adapter that you see on the screen there is going to make that possible for you. So you'll plug that one end into your solar generator and then the four other eight millimeter cables can connect to your solar panels. The adapter and the additional solar panels are obviously sold separately. So if you are needing to get a lot of power while the sun's up and you're off grid, I would recommend multiple panels for you. So overall, a really nice option here. If you are looking for something that's gonna be very portable and help to give you some electricity while you're off grid, this is gonna be a great way to go. That completes our look for today. Again, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Thanks for watching.